Slideshow: Summer of '66, Pleasant Hill, California

I know this looks creepy, like I'm some little drunken street urchin or a freak show exhibit, but I actually remember this day because I had so much fun hanging out with my dad. I mean, who else but a weak little kid with a brain not yet completely formed would let themselves be scribbled on like this? I guess I should explain the Naval theme. My dad had been in the Navy a few years earlier.

In this slide, my father's only twenty-one-years old, yet our living room was covered in his oil paintings and in our backyard were his carved, towering totem poles, a bridge he made over a koi pond and a play jailhouse complete with wanted posters.

My dad couldn't sit still. He always needed to create something; if it wasn't art and backyard play structures, he'd
create havoc. Life with my father was never boring.